Date: | 9/17/98 | ||
To: | Members, Board of Education | ||
From: | Chris Manaseri | ||
Subject: | Backup for 9/22 |
This may be a record. Short memo, short meeting - home by 9:00? Is there a ball game on on Tuesday night? Are Mark or Sammy playing? Is the baby asleep yet?
NON -AGENDA ITEMS:
1.0 EPC - Nada. Someday we Will put motion detectors in and spend our cash.
2.0 New Project: We have a number and a project manager, and thanks to Mike and Leanne we have our paperwork filed with Albany within three days of when we wanted it there. Now they have two full months to check one box on a piece of paper that only confirms that the scope of the project is small enough so that an environmental impact study doesn’t need to be done. Wanna take bets on their timing?
3.0 CBO: Larry Driscoll’s office has called to schedule a meeting regarding the CBO project for Monday September 28 from 3:30 until 5 in Waterloo ( exact site to be determined). This should be superintendent and Board committee types, not the whole business office from each school. Shared Services committee is Anne, Norm, Mike, and Laurie. I told them three of us would be there. I’ve got it on my calendar and I’ll let you guys arm wrestle for who gets to stay home. I’m sure we would all be welcome, but I figured if I could get half of a committee there, I’d be doing well. ( SF says they’re sending their whole Board!) Who wants to come? Gary Alger is being invited as well.
4.0 Tax Collection continues to go well. Alice is still smiling. We/she has collected $301,779.46 as she says- with no complaints!
5.0 Auditors have gone! Unfortunately, the ST-3 and SA100 have not. I will plan to finish up next week and get off to Albany ASAP. ( My problem is that I want to make sure I tell them our version of the technical truth the same way this year as Tom Cummings did last year - probably a little like the President trying to keep track of which truth is which). I do know that South Seneca still doesn’t have theirs done yet either, though, so we’re not alone in the tardy boat. Expect an audit report from Jack at our second October meeting. Gloria has gone above and beyond in the past two weeks to try to get this all cleared up and has the full confidence of Scott, the accountant who was here to do all the work. You’ll see on the agenda I want to send Gloria and Leanne on a field trip to Albany for the day on Tuesday to take notes on what we need to do differently for next year. Hope you approve or they’ll have to drive backwards (or something).
6.0 New Staff appear to be working out well. We just had an administrative team meeting this afternoon and we think everybody’s up to speed that’s here already, with the last two new faces due in next week in Marty Rotz and Trinya Cichy.
7.0 Kidspeace visit will occur after our meeting, on Thursday, and more to come about them after that. Pig Farms, Land Claims, and Water and Sewer Districts seem to be taking up most of the voting public’s time nowadays instead of Depot reuse.
8.0 Distance Learning: Attached are two items related to this. One is a press release issued by Senator Mike’s office about the $25,000 member item we already plan to use to compliment our capital reserve account. The second is notice of the awarding of a combination Grant/Loan from the USDA that we’re in on with Lyons, Sodus, Marcus Whitman, and Red Creek. I will attend this meeting on Tuesday and know more about who’s still interested and how much it can mean to us. May be one more source for local share on the project OR may combine with Mike’s money if we don’t get voter approval to at least make this portion of our plan a reality.
9.0 SDM met last week for the first time this season. See minutes for update.
10.0 RCS@60 meets for the final time Monday night 9/21 at 7. We will have our cake and eat it too, while we watch a draft version of Pete’s videotape. I expect Jim Delia and Pete Gregoire to come to that meeting and suggest we use the impetus of RCS@60 to launch a Romulus Foundation - a separate group of supporters willing to raise private money to support the school and/or its kids. This an idea from the Raising Aspirations Conference from Rural Schools which Dana, Jim, Rick Bley and Nancy Bauder went to a few years back. Maybe....
11.0 BOCES Open House is October 29. See Flier- anybody want to go? Since my daughter is now a student in their culinary arts program preparing the meal, I plan to.
12.0 Mia ( Michaela Guilianna Manaseri) arrives in JFK on Friday night at 8:00 pm. I will be off all day Friday and Monday on “vacation” helping get everyone adjusted to a change in lifestyle in Lodi. I will be around on the weekend if needed but sleepy - FYI.
AGENDA ITEMS:
1.0 Routine is, except you will finally find a treasurer’s report for the Spring of 1998 for General Fund, as we have tidied up all of last year’s cash and accounts. Expect to see these more regularly now for 1998-99.
2.0 Conferences: Note the large ticket item is David presenting at a National Conference ( two years in a row). This will be reimbursed to the District through the Tech- Prep Grant which we are part of. Others are within budget.
3.0 Officially appointing Ashley McGraw and Bernie Donegan’s office to handle the paper work of our capital project is appropriate at this time, if not overdue. So far so good. Attached is a copy of the pricing breakdown from Allen after our 8/25 facilities committee meeting. I will be going to faculty meetings in house in early October to make certain the faculty is up to speed on our proposal. See copy of today’s paycheck memo and material for October Bulletin as well to make sure you know what’s up, too.
4.0 Discussion of funding for Capital Project. As those of you with internet access may have already seen by now, we received word from Washington that they were getting around to sending us some money that should have come our way in 1993 and 1994. Combined, these figures total some $44,500. IF we were to use that money to account for additional local funds available in support of the capital project, we could reduce the tax impact necessary from $0.06 per thousand to $0.02. ( One third of one percent to a lot less than that, but still not quite zero.). That got me to thinking about what it would take to make this a truly guaranteed zero-impact project. The good folks at Bernie’s say it’ll take $217,000 cash on hand to do $1.5 Million worth of work at zero tax impact. Our resources look more like: $118,500 in reserve; $25,000 member item; $44,500 in back Federal Aid on depot land values; totaling $188,000 ( IF you do as suggested above). We COULD look to some of our salary savings from the retirements this year to make up the $29,000 shortfall from Freebyville. How much do we anticipate in savings? Take a look at the spreadsheet enclosed. It’s too early to get into detailed speculation on the entire budget for next year, BUT we will see a sizable amount of breakage from the musical chairs we’ve been playing. You could choose to use some of that now, if you really think a zero tax impact will make the project fly. If you don’t use it now, it will be available to you in greater supply later come budget time. We should talk. I don’t expect the press there, so it might be as good a time as any.
Main call here is do you trust any tax levy impact for this project or not? I’m not sure 6 cents or 2 cents or no cents is the make-it- or-break-it issue. But it IS your project. Speaking of that, we might also like to divvy up the presentation of the project so that maybe Mike and Tom do the gym and Anne and Cornelia do the Auditorium and Rhonda and Norm and Laurie do the Distance learning while we let the experts talk money and design. ( Notice who’s missing from this presentation scheme?) Let’s talk.
5.0 Barb and Mike will Update you on items including another visitation to our middle level program this time from the north country on September 30.
6.0 One more round of musical chairs with one player yet to be named in personnel. ( I wonder if St. Peter goes through limbo the way we use the cafeteria monitor slot).
There. All the news that’s fit to print right now. Hope to see all but Rhonda Tuesday night - she’s emailed in already. Don’t forget to try Docushare - you can post to the bulletin board there and everybody gets to see your message. 9:00 TOPS!
CM/CM
9/17/98 CONFIDENTIAL 1
9/17/98 CONFIDENTIAL 3